BUCKLAND — Ninth-grade English students are now studying John Steinbeck’s novella, “Of Mice and Men,” but to help them understand its Great Depression-era context, they’re also studying the stark, documentary photography of Dorothea Lange in art class.
This week, they took on Lange’s role of social commentator, giving slide-show presentations of their own black-and-white photographs that demonstrate both artistic composition and the human qualities they value most.
Welcome to “Artglish,” a pilot course where art meets English literature at Mohawk Trail Regional School. The students dubbed it Artglish, because it’s a hybrid of English and art — a collaboration between art teacher Rachel Silverman and English teacher Rachel Hoogstraten.
School Principals Lynn Dole and Marisa Mendonza say that connecting art to literature creates opportunities “for in-depth exploration of themes, as students explore shared essential questions in the art and English courses.”
“Doing this (art) project, I really felt it connects us to our values, and helps us connect to the characters in the book,” said student Lillian VanFleet. “When we see how important our values are to us, we see how devastating it must be for the characters to give up their values in the end (of the story).”
Alison Blakeslee said studying Dorothea Lange not only helped to better understand the Depression-era story of two migrant farm workers who dream of owning land, but inspired them in their own photography projects.
“In ‘Of Mice and Men,’ the whole book is surrounded by people’s values,” Blakeslee said. “We’re picking a character and wondering what their values would be, and we’re writing an essay of how they’re sticking or not sticking with their values — and what their resolution is.”
“This class really did make me like school more,” said Ryan Cook.
The first unit, on “Authenticity, Poetry and Literary devices,” was about students “finding authentic voice in writing and art,” according to Hoogstraten. They studied literary examples of poems about the poet’s name, and about how the name did or didn’t reflect who they were.
“So each student wrote a poem about their name and created a work of art, to act as a framework or visual component of the poem,” Hoogstraten said.
“In my class, they are learning artistic principles of design,” said Silverman. “What is pattern and repetition in poetry, and what is it in a visual perspective.”
Although Artglish is still new, Mohawk Co-principal Lynn Dole says it is already inspiring other teachers to consider ways to integrate their work with students. For instance, the eighth-grade STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) teachers and social studies teachers are looking at ways to integrate their courses.
“This example is definitely inspiring others to do classwork integration,” said Dole. “I’m really proud of how these educators are inspiring their students.”